Michael
Haneke has made a career out of punishing his characters and by extension the
audience, for their sins. From the parents of the deranged Benny in Benny’s Video
to everyone in Code Unknown, to Daniel Auteuil’s in Cache to the entire village
in The White Ribbon and in most of his other films, in a Haneke film the past
is never forgotten, and those past sins eventually catch up with everyone. And
Haneke has never let viewers off the hook either – he directly blames them for
all the violence in both versions of Funny Games, and holds nations responsible
for their past in other films. While many critics have seen his latest film,
Amour, as a more humanist side to Haneke – a film where he finally feels warmth
for his characters, I am not convinced this is the case. True, the old married
couple at the heart of Amour have no past sins (that we know about) to atone
for – but they are still punished quite thoroughly. The only thing they really
do wrong is grow old – and Amour lays bare exactly what happens to them because
of it – and by extension what will happen to everyone in the audience one day
as well. So while it some ways, Amour really is the “warmest” film that Haneke
has ever made, in other ways it’s the cruelest – his characters get punished
much like they have in the past, but this time they haven’t really done
anything wrong.

The
film opens with a seemingly happy Paris couple in their 80s coming home from a
concert. They have been married for years, and still seem very much in love.
The next morning they wake up and have breakfast together. Everything is going
normally until Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) stops responding to Georges (Jean-Louis
Trintignat). He tries everything, and nothing can get her to snap out of it,
until suddenly she does. She has no memory of what happened, and thinks he is
playing a cruel trick on her. They go to the doctor, and discover she has had a
stroke. And for the rest of the movie, she will slowly deteriorate – and he
will be there every step of the way trying to take of her.

The
movie takes place almost entirely in their apartment – and they have few
visitors. Their daughter Eva (Isabelle Huppert) stops by occasionally – and
disapproves of how Georges is handling everything but he doesn’t really care.
He promised Anne he would never take her back to the hospital, and he means to
keep that promise. They have a nurse, and later a second nurse, come over to
help take care of Anne, but Georges fires one of them in one of the harshest
scenes in the movie. He doesn’t approve of how she was treating Anne – and when
she complains he tells her “I hope one day someone treats you like you treat
your patients when you cannot defend yourself”. Anne wants to die – talks about
it a lot until she can barely speak at all (then she just repeats “Hurts” for
hours on end). She even tries to stop eating by refusing to swallow anything
Georges feeds her – leading to a moment that is as sudden and shocking as the
suicide in Cache.

Amour
is not an easy film – nor is it meant to be. Most of the movie is the day to
day routine that Georges and Anne go through – shot by Haneke is his typically
cold, detached style as the camera simply sits back and observes the two of
them. It is an honest film however – anyone who has been around someone slowly
dying could tell you that. The performances here – perhaps more than any other
Haneke film – are key to the movie’s success. Emmanuelle Riva may have the
simpler role, as she has to waste away and slowly die, but it is a brave
performance, and Riva and Haneke pull no punches here. This is not one of those
movies where the woman dies of some mysterious disease that somehow makes them
more beautiful as they die (I think it’s called Love Story syndrome). Riva’s
physical transformation is shocking. And she completely and utterly nails the
behavior and speech patterns of a stroke victim. But Jean-Louis Trintignant is
even better, as the man who has to watch his wife slowly dissolve into nothing.
When the movie begins, he seems like such a nice guy, but while you could argue
that everything he does in the movie is understandable, and motivated mainly by
love, you could also argue that he behaves selfishly – and at times even acts
like a child. It’s probably too much to ask for, but both Trintignant and Riva
deserve Oscar nominations this year for their amazing performances here.

Reading
some of the reviews of Amour coming out of Cannes (where the film won the Palme
D’or – placing Haneke is very exclusive company of directors who have won the
award twice) I was worried that perhaps Haneke had gone soft on us. But Amour
is hardly a soft film. Yes, he gives he feels more for the characters in this
film than he has in the past – but he still punishes them – and the audience,
and makes us watch. This is a difficult film to watch – but a brilliant one.

About Me

I am an accountant, living in Brantford, ON - and although I am married and have beautiful daughter, I still find time to watch a lot of movies. This blog is mostly reviews of new movies - with other musing thrown in as well.